The Present

by Charlotte Phillips

  ‘And you’re doing that right now?’

  ‘No time like the present, right?’

  He watched her as she leaned into the boot and prodded things around for a better fit. He could see boxes of papers and photographs from the loft that they’d gone through together over the last week.

  ‘I thought I’d take everything I could find from the Land Army time, just in case, you know, she needs a prompt. The woman is over ninety, after all, so who knows if she’ll even remember anything. You know what old people are like. I mean, I spoke to one of the care managers on the phone, so I know she doesn’t get many visitors. Her husband died years ago, and they didn’t have kids, so the poor thing is on her own, really. Some of the people at one of the nursing homes I looked around with Rod were mad as boxes of frogs, hardly knew what day it was. If I ever end up like that I’ll be getting a one-way ticket to Switzerland.’

  She stood up straight, pulled her phone out of her pocket, glanced at it, and made an exasperated noise.

  ‘What’s up?

  She gazed up at the sky. Perfectly clear right now. It had snowed a little overnight and the white ground gleamed in the light from the windows of the house and the car.

  ‘This is so typical. You’ve no idea the hoops I had to jump through to swing one day out to do this, I’ve got so much to do, and all this Christmas social stuff is about to descend on me. And now the bloody WEATHER is going to kick off, and I’m questioning whether this whole thing is nuts.’

  She held the phone up but he’d seen the forecast this morning. A serious cold snap and heavy snow was on the cards, and as evidenced by the look of pinkish blue on her cheekbones and the tip of her nose, the temperature was already taking a nosedive.

  She rubbed her eyes with her gloved hands as if she’d now overthought the situation so much that she couldn’t see straight.

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, it’s probably madness, isn’t it? I can tell just by the look on your face that you think it is. Rod said as much. He thinks I should just wait until after Christmas, we’ve got so much on. He’s got a huge competitive family and it’s my turn to do a Christmas this year that will live up to theirs. But Gran needs a boost now, not in three weeks’ time. It could give her a reason to fight a bit more to get better. Even though I know logistically it’s bonkers – it’s a bit of a gamble on the snow not coming in – I still want to give it a go.’

  This was really becoming something she was pinning her hopes on. Anyone could see that. Hope was always good.

  ‘And you really think that clapped-out Mini is a safe bet on black ice? I mean, look at it.’

  He tapped the nearest rust patch on the roof, and she folded her arms.

  ‘Do not insult my car. It’s a classic.’

  He grinned at her indignant face.

  ‘It isn’t kept like a classic though, is it?’ he said. ‘I mean, a classic sits on a driveway and gets polished every day and is taken out when it’s sunny. Whereas this looks like you’ve driven it into the ground and forgotten to give it a service.’

  ‘I just haven’t got around to it,’ she protested. ‘It passed its MOT and it gets me from A to B no problem. I know it might not look like much, but it’s perfectly safe to drive.’ She looked at the tyres doubtfully. ‘At least I think it is.’ A pause while she clearly went around in another circle in her mind. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe Rod’s right, and this is all a stupid idea. I’m driving myself nuts with this.’

  ‘I’ll take you,’ he said on impulse.

  ‘But you as much as just said this outing is madness.’

  ‘It bloody is. I’ll still take you.’

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  ‘Why?’

  Bloody good question. Which he intended to evade for his own benefit as well as hers. What the actual fuck was happening to him? He’d ticked pretty much every box on the list of property maintenance for Olive’s house. The only other job he’d had lined up before his planned Austria trip had called him the previous night to put him off until the new year. Suited him just fine. And now driving her to some freezing village in the middle of nowhere, in, if the forecast was correct, possible heavy snow and definite ice, was for some reason more appealing than getting an early flight right out of here and away from all things Christmas. Ten minutes on the Internet, and he could be out of here tonight on a budget flight to the back of beyond.

  ‘Because you are on the brink of talking yourself out of it, and you’re going to waste half the day debating it and then drive to Hertfordshire anyway in that death trap,’ he said, making the reason about her and therefore slickly avoiding any acknowledgement that he, on any level, would get a modicum of enjoyment out of this. ‘So let’s just cut to the chase and get on the road.’ He paused and looked the car up and down again. ‘But not in that.’

  ‘Because your van is so much better,’ she countered. ‘It’s full of tools, and the heater roasts your left ankle while the rest of you freezes.’ A pause. ‘No offence.’

  ‘Lucky for you my other car is a 4x4. then.’

  After waiting around for Jack to switch cars, the journey to Hertfordshire had been a frustrating experience on the slow-moving roads. He had insisted on stopping for something to eat which fed her impatience all the more. On the positive side, Elizabeth Warrender had all her marbles and was only too happy to talk about her war years. On the negative side, she was also the kind of old person who wouldn’t be rushed, and it was clear within moments of sitting down with her that she would be telling her story, her way, in her own time frame, and never mind what social engagements might happen to be on the cards for any of her visitors that evening. Then again, if she had nothing to look forward to and no relatives, Lucy supposed she might eke out whatever company that might come her way too.

  ‘We have a tea dance for the residents once a week,’ the care assistant had told them when they arrived. ‘This is the last one before Christmas.’

  The Briars was a sprawling monster of a building, with peeling paint on the vast bay window frames and an institutional-strength, hard-wearing brown carpet in the foyer. Information posters shared the walls with brightly-coloured, framed prints, and there was a vague smell of gravy dinners underpinned by disinfectant. The communal sitting room was lined with chairs, some of them occupied by old people. The staff had done the best they could with a spindly Christmas tree and not enough tree decorations and threadbare tinsel. Metallic paper garlands criss-crossed the ceiling. Half a dozen of the residents were up and dancing, but there was enough foot tapping and clapping going on to imply that the whole room would be frugging around the floor given half a chance. It was exactly the kind of scene that had put her off the care home she’d looked around with Rod. Lucy clutched a folder of photographs under one arm, and the box of Christmas tree decorations under the other. The rest of Gran’s memorabilia was still in the boot of Jack’s car. She would just duck outside to the car park if it seemed like memory prompting was needed on a bigger scale.

  In fact, it wasn’t. The first thing Elizabeth eventually said after they’d waited finger-drummingly long for a pot of tea to brew on the table beside them was, ‘I remember Olive.’

  Elizabeth had white hair, brushed back into a neat chignon at the back of her neck, and a floral dress with a pale pink cardigan. She looked at least ten years younger than Lucy had expected, and she looked through Gran’s photographs with genuine interest. All good signs surely, when you were asking someone to think back more than half a century. She and Jack sat down on either side of her. Lucy was forced now to raise her voice above the sound of dance hall music coming from an ancient tape deck on a table in the corner

  ‘I’ve only got sketchy information from Gran’s – from Olive’s – belongings,’ she said. ‘I know she lived at Horston Green Hostel in 1944. Since I found out you were there at the same time, I’ve looked back through her letters, and she does mention someone named Lizzy. Would that be you?’

  A smile and a no
d, and Lucy breathed out in a rush. She really hadn’t realised how she had expected this outing to be doomed to failure. And how much she wanted to find out more for herself and not just for Gran.

  ‘It would be me, I think.’

  A woman with a mop of grey hair and a billowing floral dress pirouetted across the room and plopped into the seat next to Jack. She shifted up into his personal space and slipped an arm through his.

  ‘Gregory?’ she said, peering into his face. ‘You’re late.’

  ‘Edna, this is not Gregory,’ Elizabeth said loudly. It made no difference whatsoever. Edna continued to look up at him adoringly and stroke his arm. Lucy closed her eyes briefly. He had driven her all this way in vile weather, and now he was about to be mugged by a geriatric.

  ‘She thinks you’re her husband,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He’s been dead for over twenty years.’ She huddled in and added in a stage whisper, ‘To be perfectly honest we think she puts it on. She thinks every good-looking young man who crosses that threshold is Gregory, blond, dark, tall, short, it’s all the same to her.’

  The woman’s face faltered a little.

  ‘Gregory?’

  Jack patted her hand.

  ‘For you, Edna, I could be.’

  Her face lit up.

  Oh, for goodness’ sake! Age was clearly no barrier to a chat-up line that sledgehammer heavy. Then again, this was all an improvement on what Lucy had been expecting, which would have been to exit the building, sit in the car, and head back ASAP to Canterbury. The dance music kicked into a jaunty waltz, and when Jack stood up Lucy waited for him to do exactly that. Instead, he held his hand out to Edna, and when she took it he swept her into the middle of the room, and took a turn around the floor among the old people. Her delighted face was wreathed in smiles.

  ‘Oh, my dear, we’ll never hear the last of THIS,’ Elizabeth said, staring.

  ‘So, did you know Olive very well?’ Lucy said, trying to channel some professional focus on the interview. Not easy with Jack and Edna twirling in her peripheral vision.

  ‘We weren’t close friends,’ Elizabeth said. ‘But I do remember her from the hostel.’

  There was a vague tone to her answer that was enough to invoke a surge of disappointment. What exactly had she been expecting here? A blow-by-blow account of Gran’s war years? Discovering enough people left to enable some kind of a group love-in reunion for Gran? She was being ridiculous. Most of the people Gran would have known in the war years had to be at least ninety years old now. It had been a long shot at best.

  Maybe just getting a bit of background was the best she could hope for from this.

  ‘What was it like?’ she asked. ‘The Land Army?’

  Elizabeth sat up straight in the armchair and reached for the cup of tea on the side table. She settled herself back and looked across the room. Beyond the window the view was of the car park. It was afternoon now’ the journey had taken longer than expected because of the traffic and the ice and snow already on the roads. Now snow was beginning to fall again very lightly, and Lucy looked away. There was no point in stressing. The weather would just have to do its thing. She was here now, and she wasn’t going to make a swift exit over a few snowflakes.

  ‘I joined up with my older sister. I was just nineteen, and I’d lived my whole life to that point in town with my parents. I would never have had the chance to travel or to experience country life or live away from home if it hadn’t been for the war. In many ways, despite all the hardships, it changed my life for the better.’

  Jack waltzed past to some insanely jaunty music featuring trumpets. Quite the crowd of residents had taken the floor now. Lucy found herself unable to take her eyes off him.

  ‘He seems a very nice young man,’ Elizabeth said, following her gaze.

  Lucy jerked her eyes back. For goodness’ sake, all this effort to talk to a proper witness, and she was distracted by Jack swinging a pensioner around the room to ‘In The Mood’. She groped for her focus. The unreality of the situation, that was all this was. In the time she’d met him, she’d fallen through a ceiling, she’d had him trawling through hundreds of boxes of tat on a mad whim, and now she’d got him driving in freezing temperatures, and dancing with pensioners in a care home. She’d known him to speak to for hardly any time, but he had thrown himself into every situation for her, no matter what it involved, and no matter how bonkers she came across. She felt such gratitude and warmth for him, for the deliciousness of feeling supported no matter what the crazy situation. He had understood her mind-set in this, the importance of this family relationship of hers on which her entire sense of childhood security was built, and yet she hardly knew him at all.

  ‘We’re just friends. He gave me a lift here, that’s all. Tell me what it was like, what you remember. Even if I could just talk a bit to Gran about it, it would be lovely.’

  Elizabeth smiled.

  ‘There were about twenty of us I suppose, living in the hostel.’

  ‘You mean Horston Green?’

  Her face lit.

  ‘Horston Green. Yes. It was a huge, sprawling building with enormous grounds around it. The rooms were shared. It was very basic. I think the building had been empty for a long time before we all moved in. It was crumbling, really, in a terrible state of repair, but there was plenty of room, and it was right in the middle of farmland. And we would get up at first light and cycle out to work at the farms in the local area. Some of the bicycles were awful, and there was always a bit of a scramble to get one of the better ones because a few miles on one of the bad ones could be so uncomfortable. Although, if we were lucky sometimes one of the army trucks would pass us and they would stop and throw our bikes in the back and give us a ride.’

  ‘What kind of work did you do?’

  ‘Oh goodness, some of it was tough. I hadn’t done a proper day’s graft in my life before that. None of us had. Some of the girls worked on a dairy farm. My sister and I brought in crops. Tomatoes, fruit. And we did everything. Some of it was backbreaking, but we did it all. Dug ditches, built walls, mucked out animals. You can’t imagine how it felt to be in the fresh air. Real fresh air. I can remember picking apples in the rain, the green smell of them, the freshness of it all, being outside like that after the town, it was like being free.’

  ‘What about men? I think my gran met someone, you see. But I don’t have his name, just some gifts from him, some notes he sent with them. I’d love to be able to find out what happened to him.’

  ‘Oh, there were dances and the like. Sometimes we would get the bus into town. There was an airbase not far away because we were close to London, and the Air Force boys would come to dances and talk to us. Some of the girls had relationships. There was a warden at the hostel keeping an eye on us all, but of course there was still more freedom than any of us had had up to that point.’ She took a sip of her tea, her eyes glazed a little, thinking back. ‘I was a total innocent, I was very shy, and I stayed mostly with my sister. I would have been terrified of what my father would say if I’d got into any trouble. But not all the girls were like me. You must remember, we didn’t know what time we had left. When you met someone you liked, there wasn’t months of courting to be had. Before the war, you could sit in your parents’ front room making small talk for months before he so much as stole a kiss. When the war started, things changed. You met someone you cared about, and you had no idea when you would see him again, or even if you would.’ She took another sip of her tea. ‘The rule book went out of the window for some of the girls. Not all of course. But some.’

  So it was a question of whether Gran had acted up or not. Had she been the kind of girl who would throw away the rule book? She couldn’t help thinking how amused Gran would be by that. The Gran she knew and loved, definitely yes.

  ‘Was Olive one of them?’ she said. ‘Can you remember her with anyone in particular?’

  ‘You know I’m sure your gran had a chap back at home,’ Elizabeth said, thoughtfully. ‘She had
letters from him. He was in a protected occupation as I recall, never got called up.’

  Grandad.

  ‘That would be my grandfather,’ she said excitedly. ‘He was a draughtsman, some kind of technical drawing I think, and he had some kind of vital war work to do with aeroplanes.’

  She searched Elizabeth’s face, but the old lady shook her head.

  ‘I don’t remember his name, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Arthur,’ Lucy smiled. ‘It was Arthur. It must be him. I know they were friends before the war, but they didn’t get married until 1950.’ She paused. ‘I think there was someone else too, though. That’s really why I’m here. Someone she got to know when she was in Hertfordshire. He sent her these.’

  She lifted the box of decorations and opened them. Unwrapped the first one, and handed it to Elizabeth. Eleven pipers piping. From the first moment it was obvious she had seen them before. Her eyes widened, and she sat up straight to get a good look at it.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I had forgotten. It’s wonderful to see this again,’ she said. ‘Like a piece of the past.’ She turned the tiny pan pipes decoration gently in spindly fingers, looking at it in wonder. ‘There was someone,’ she said. ‘There was. He didn’t send her them like this, though. He sent them one by one.’

  Lucy’s heart was beating so fast she thought it might spring up and leap out of her mouth.

  ‘Each one has a note wrapped around it,’ she said. ‘Really beautiful messages.’ She unfolded the pipers’ note and read it out.

  In hard times I will be there for you. There is no distance that my love for you cannot breach.

  Elizabeth sighed and sat back for a moment, watching the room smiling and dancing. Jack was right in the middle of the fray, like some kind of geriatric babe magnet.

  ‘One decoration arrived every day in the week or so before Christmas 1944,’ she said. ‘We all got very excited about them, of course. You only have to look at them to see why. Letters would arrive at the hostel – it was a real high point of the day if you had a letter – but the post wasn’t very reliable. These were, though, as I recall, one a day. I think perhaps someone hand-delivered them. I remember crowding around Olive’s bed and looking at them.’